Should there be a cap on total wealth possible for one individual?

posted by Theodore Kneupper | 65pt
March 25, 2017

Each day I get numerous requests to sign petitions and make contributions to worthy causes. The irony is that it for every problem that is solved, three or more others replace it: WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THIS ABSURD SITUATION? The answer is that there are no limits on the total possible wealth one person can accumulate, resulting in the most ambitious wealth-owners being the owners of political power: A person with a billion dollars has 100,000 times more power to lobby and influence politics than a person with $10,000. Indeed, a person seriously dedicated to the 'prime directive' of maximizing his wealth MUST do everything he can to get away with to make that happen, including lying, stealing, cheating, killing, bribing in the form of paying off as many political leaders as they can and even getting them to make laws so as to make this legal, even perverting the whole political, economic, and social system. This leads to increasing destruction of any meaningful sort of democracy. It is the root cause of climate change, war, media control and most of the injustices that pervades this system. If that root cause is not eliminated, it will only become worse. So, if one wants to address the problem, he must work undoing its root cause, rather than a few of its 10,000 effects. A solution to most of the complex problems would come of itself if there were a limit to any individual’s total wealth. Although the minds of many people may at this time not be ready to consider this, the fact that many are now considering seriously a socialist approach as feasible is an indication that the mentality is changing. By educating people (including most economists, who seem to dogmatically accept that the system CANNOT be changed), that will set the wheels of change into motion. So, the question is: should there be a cap on total accumulated wealth? Would that have other effects that would be worse than those of the present system?

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Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at UMass Amherst and a visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Richard Wolff is also a co-founder and active contributor of his non-profit: Democracy at Work